Strategies (Civ5)
This page is used to submit and view Civilization V strategies. Basic concepts Scouting Scouting is an integral part of the Civilization V early game. It gives you incredible benefits from finding ancient ruins, early income from meeting City-states (30 gold, if you met them first and 15 gold, if you didn't) and selling your Embassies to the AI for 1 gold per turn. Starting to trade with civilizations early on makes them friendlier and more likely to give you a Declaration of Friendship. And early Declaration allows you to sell your luxuries for 240 gold, instead of just 6 gold per turn, which equals only 180 gold. Always start your game by building at least 2 Scouts on big continental maps and less on island maps. Citizen managment In the early game it's most important for your city to grow. Lock your tiles on food and set your city to Production. When a city grows the new citizen will automatically work the highest production tile and you will get the benefit on the very same turn, because food is consumed first, then the city grows and all the production and gold is used. If you left your city on Food production instead, the new worked tile would go to waste. Lock down your citizen on a food tile for following turns. Expanding While producing a Settler your city cannot starve, which allows you to set every tile to production. 3 counts for 1 in Settler production. It also cannot grow, which is why you shouldn't produce Settlers before level 4, because it will take too long for it to catch up, if it's only level 2. Your expansion should be located next to luxuries you don't have, set on a hill for added early production and defensive bonus, next to a mountain for an Observatory and by a river for a trading bonus and fresh water for farming. However, expansion like that won't happen often but you should aim at least for another luxury. Settle on a luxury to delay the need for a Worker early, especially when going for a multiple city expand. Understanding research order Opening Strategies Early military invasion Early on you should look to get 4 pop in your cap, and then build a couple of cities (4 max at that time imo), build an archer 1st and then a library in your newly settled cities, build 3 archers in your cap (6 total) and then build NC in your cap. That sets you up for a good science game and then go construction and upgrade them to CB's. After that education is your next goal. Get a horseman or two and you are free to conquer stuff. Don't let the AI's massive army worry you. They suck at placing units correctly and they have lots of melee units, who suck early on. Your 6 CB's are enough to drive off their attacks and then make a counter attack. Build a few more CB's if you feel really threatened. In my experience, try to avoid attacking civs with good early game UU's (Carthage/India, elephants really hurt). Don't build too much melee units early on, just keep them around for capturing cities and being meat shields. If you go liberty get that great sciencist when you finish it, that can really snowball you in tech. If you go honor, get that +50% xp policy,range/logistics cb's/xbows in no time. The only problem for early wars can be happiness, raze AI cities if they are bad or don't have any good building or resources nearby. As for the GPT, sometimes you will go negative, but don't let it worry you too much, because you have to take that hit, but later on you will have more cities/science/gold. Use oxford on Dynamite, a game changing tech. Melee units start to become good with muskets and afterwards, slap up some barracks/armories and you can have some monster units. Use you rifles/infantry as meat shields for your artillery late game, and use cavalry/tanks for taking cities. Also, Flight is another game changing tech too, If you don't have any oil, go and get some, that's a priority if you want domination. If you play water maps, turtle up early on, try get science rolling in, and rush to navigation, frigates are monsters. Really late game, typically who gets to nukes first tends to be the winner of games if he has uranium, and do the same thing for uranium as you did with oil, make sure you get it. As for the barb problem pillaging your trade routes, they can only spawn in you don't have vision of an area, so I usually make sure i settle all available spots in my corner of the world so they won't be a problem. Also for an early war, if you can get a good faith generating pantheon, make sure to get holy warriors, or if you decide to go piety for whatever reason, get that reformation that lets you buy post industrial units with faith. Hope it helps, I go hardcore warmonger most of the time, this is my usual playstyle on immortal and emperor. E: for the Attile question, you have to take that negative gpt early on and carve out yourself a big empire, with time you will become more powerful than someone with 2/3 cities. Petra opener (religion + wonders opener) This strategy guarantees getting classical wonders Hanging Gardens and Petra on Immortal difficulty. You will be behind in Science a bit, but it should kickstart a great capital city. The free Caravan from Petra will help with extra beakers from more trade routes with more advanced Civilizations. The Great Engineer point from Petra combined with the free Garden guarantees an early Great Engineer, which you should implement into your plan after you finish this opener. Since a desert bias is fantastic for the belief Desert Folklore, you want to start with the Shrine. You can skip Monument and use Legalism to get it for free. It will delay your policies a bit, if you don't find a culture Ancient Ruin, but it is not an issue. There will be small windows of time where you can't produce anything in the build order, use that time to put a couple of turns of hammers into a Worker or Caravan. You have to beeline Currency, otherwise you risk an AI getting Petra. You have more time, if there are no other desert starting bias Civilizations in the game, but don't delay it too much. It's worth getting Masonry, if you have Marble, because its passive bonus speeds up production of classical Wonders. If you hit a science Ancient Ruin and you get a needed technology, squeeze in Writing for Libraries. Nothing too complicated here. Start Tradition, get Legalism for free monuments and then Aristocracy to speed up Wonder production. After that complete Tradition and transition into your mid game plan. Desert Folklore is absolutely essential. You will have a lot of Faith generation early and you'll be able to secure a good Religion. Pick beliefs according to your overall gameplan. Category:Strategy Babylon In any type of map, choosing Babylon as your civilization will give you an amazing head start. Build whatever buildings/units you want, but make sure to set research to Pottery, followed by Writing. Once Writing is obtained (in about 16 turns), you will gain a Great Scientist. Making an Academy with the Great Scientist will generate 8 more science per turn, more than doubling it from the 6 you should (already?) have at this point. This will effectively reduce the number of turns needed for each of the other starting technologies by more than half, yielding you a great advantage in the early stages of the game. Poland UA (4 city superpower) This 4 city opener is taking advantage of the Polish unique ability Solidarity which gives a free Social Policy when you advance to the next technological era. It uses these free policies to expand faster and more efficiently giving you a headstart. It can be used with other Civilizations but it is not as effective. It works on every difficulty and maps with enough space for expansions that have 7 tiles between them. After this opener aim for Hagia Sophia, Pyramids, Sistine Chapel, Chicen Itza (if not Deity) and Porcelain Tower, but judge wisely, if they are really obtainable. It supports all victory types. Only get Shrine if you don't find an ancient ruin with Faith or meet two religious City-states which are enough for a free Pantheon. By the time you are producing Settlers, you should already have Collective Rule social policy active. When you get to constructing Oracle, Aristocracy should also kick in. Buy an additional Worker when you have 310 gold. You can also steal one from a City-state or an enemy civilization. They spawn around turn 30. In your expansions first build Monument, Library (buy them if you have enough gold from selling Luxuries), Caravan, Worker, Granary. This is the most efficient technology order for quickly jumping ages and getting the free policies. You can add Archery, if you have issues with barbarians or neighbour an aggressive civilization. By ignoring the lower part of the research tree, your Caravans will provide a lot of extra Beakers, make sure to take advantage of that. This social policy order takes advantage of Collective rule and Aristocracy when you are actually abusing them to their fullest potential. Wait to take Legalism until you complete Monuments in all your cities. You can pick Oligarchy before it and pick Legalism with the free policy from Oracle. Religion isn't vital for this strategy. As your Pantheon take Fertility Rites (+10% growth) and build Hagia Sophia for your Prophet, but don't prioritize it over Oracle or National College. As your beliefs you will want Feed the World (Shrines and Temples provide +1 food) or Swords into Plowshares (15% faster Growth rate for city, if not at war). If you can enhance your religion, take Religious Texts (religions spreads faster). Category:Strategy